California's Presidential Election Reform Act

[August1991]

Anyone know whether this will pass? Will it even get to a ballot?

It's a good thing for the Democrats that the Presidential Election Reform Act is in so much trouble. Because if it ever becomes law, they might never win the White House again.

The act, a proposed ballot initiative in California, is a particularly clever - the uncharitable might say devious - attempt by the Republican Party to create a permanent governing majority.

Supporters of the initiative want a referendum on it during state elections next June, and are busy collecting the signatures necessary to get it on the ballot. If approved by a majority of the voters, the initiative would then become law in California in time for the 2008 presidential vote, and would greatly increase the Republicans' chances of victory. All because of the wonky rules of the Electoral College.

In presidential elections, each state casts a certain number of votes in the Electoral College, based on its population. The bigger the state, the more votes it gets to cast. California, the largest state, casts 55 of the Electoral College's 538 votes.

In almost every case, the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in a state gets all of that state's Electoral College votes. Only Maine and Nebraska split the Electoral College vote between the two parties, based on each party's share of the popular vote

The initiative would remove California from the winner-take-all list. Instead, the state's 55 votes would be divvied up between the two parties based on how each party fared in 53 congressional districts. (The other two votes would be based on statewide returns.)

This would be devastating for the Democrats, who have won the state in every election since 1988. If the initiative passed, the Democrats' California Electoral College count would be reduced to about 35 and the Republicans would gain about 20. It would have the effect of adding another state the size of Illinois or Pennsylvania to the Republican column. Given that recent presidential races have been narrowly won, the Republicans would be favoured to win every election, even if the party lost the popular vote.

G & M

An extraordinary Democratic effort may have killed the initiative, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

While early polls showed 47 percent of California voters were in favor of changing the system and 35 percent opposed, that was before ads hit the airwaves and Democratic volunteers and hired staffers went head-to-head with those collecting signatures to get the issue on the ballot.

The organization pushing the initiative is now broke and far short of the number of signatures needed to get it on the ballot.

UPI

The point is that many rural red states are overrepresented in the Electoral College and the Dems balance that out by winning all the Electoral College votes in NY and California.

If this initiative were to pass, the Dems would have to move further to the right to have any chance of ever winning.

[ScottSA]

If this initiative were to pass, the Dems would have to move further to the right to have any chance of ever winning.

And that would be bad, why?

[Canadian Blue]

edited, realized the futility of responding to the above poster.

Edited October 6, 2007 by Canadian Blue